Neglected in '10: TV Carnage Presents: Let's Work It Out!!!

Credit where it's due: fourfour as you know it would be radically different were it not for the work of Derrick Beckles, the trash maestro behind TV Carnage. His Casual Fridays visual mixtape of fucked-up TV and movie clips strung together with savant-like attention and witty free association gave me a tangible sense of how much fun you could have and entertainment you could provide with video-editing. The only thing that came close to influencing me as much, outside of the work of Russ Meyer (which, I hope, permeates everything I do, not just the frenetic editing) is TVgasm's supercut of Julie Chen's "But first..."s (simply put, it showed me the joy in repetition). I'd argue that not only would this blog look different were it not for Beckles, but the Internet would in general -- his diabolical scavenging defined an essential online sensibility.

While TV Carnage certainly has a web presence (alongside the Street Boners of Gavin McInnes, who similarly influenced so much bandwidth of hipster-fashion discourse with his "DOs and DON'Ts" in Vice), ironically, it is in long form and on DVD that Beckles truly shines. Let's Work It Out!!!, his reel of work-out video footage, is his masterpiece. The thesis of the reel is delivered by an introductory clip: "If you're expecting another tedious how-to instructional tape, you're in for an entertaining surprise. So, whether you're here to learn, or just to look, stay with us and let us show you how to pump it." Over the next 70 minutes, Beckles teases the entertaining ridiculousness out of the exercise-video genre in all of its self-affirming, ab-busting, career-desperate, porn-star starring, homoerotic, "buttocks"-saying glory. As a formal exercise, things rarely come this lowbrow/brilliant. Beckles creates instant memes (Cher telling her backup exercisers to shut up because she likes the song that's coming on is used a handful of times to introduce particularly dreadful music) and mashes up sound bites to maximize hilarity ("Kill yourself...and keep on jammin'!"). Along the way is plenty of fake-rap ("My name is Brooklyn and I've perfected / The way to get big things erected"), woeful attempts at fitness by the out-of-shape and in (Traci Lords!), and hot dogs, hot dogs, hot dogs. My only complaints regard the use of footage from sources that aren't workout tapes (like Saved by the Bell and Perfect: commit entirely to your formal exercise or you'll never build your creative muscle to its maximum potential!) and the redundant commentary track included on the DVD. The medium is the mocking!

But these are minor qualms. Let's Work It Out!!! is art. Nobody does this stuff better than Beckles and more people need to realize this. (You can buy it at the TV Carnage store.) As a small sample of what to expect, check out this extra feature that someone (not me!) uploaded to YouTube of Jazzercise's Judi Sheppard Missett being a maniac:

Stuff like this is what keeps me going. Even in '11, Jazzercise still is a wonderful motivator.

Comments

John - you beat me to it! As soon as she was singing along, and moving her body awkwardly, I realized... Kristen Wiig studied this video for hours - and she owes her career to this. And I mean that with affection, as Kristen Wiig (and maybe Keenan Thompson) are about the only things that get my laughs on SNL anymore.

I may have to buy this as I'm a big fan of working out at home and fitness exercise DVD's. I shudder to admit this but I even OWNED that Cher video you mention. It was predictably terrible so I probably worked out to it only once but I still remember Cher telling her flunkies to shut up for her favorite songs. Which I think were frequently hers.

Someone tried to loan me a Jazzercise video but, well, you saw that chick. Who could work out to all of that? I suppose this is irrelevant but her form on some of those moves is also titanically poor. I hope he included some clips of Richard Simmons doing his "sizzle" move.

But first.... I just want to point out that when I was about 8 my mom used to get this mom of a kid in my class to watch me after school - she was a platinum blonde Jazzercise instructor, who once taught our third grade class a routine to "2 Legit 2 Quit", and I used to have to play with her awful and nerdy son while she taught classes.

He's all grown up now and lives in a communal living space in Oakland and runs around trying to keep the man at bay, preaching about oppression and writing blog posts about how he spent 15 days in silent meditation. He used the word "reflection" a lot.